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Life-Insurance Industry Spends Millions to Keep Death Tax Alive
by Dick Patten - No CommentsPosted on November 30th, 2010 9:10 am
The other side in the debate often libels the supporters of repeal as “greedy, rich fat cats.”
What you may not know is that the real “greed” rests with the life-insurance industry. It spends millions to keep the estate tax alive – in order to keep selling (and profiting from) estate tax-related policies for family business owners and farmers.
Today, the American Family Business Foundation (AFBF) released a new Issue Brief: “Life Insurance Cash Cow: An Issue Brief on the Hidden Side of Estate Tax Lobbying,” co-authored by Tim Carney, an award-winning investigative journalist and Senior Political Columnist with the Washington Examiner, and yours truly.
The brief documents the life-insurance industry’s full-court press to keep the death tax alive. You see, the life insurance industry stands to lose a lot if Congress repeals the estate tax.
As the brief notes, the life insurance industry makes an estimated 10 percent of its revenues from products designed to help family business owners minimize or avoid the estate tax.
What that means is that while repealing the estate tax might be good for family business owners and farmers, it’s bad for the BIG business of selling life insurance.
No wonder then that the life insurance lobby spent some $10 million per month in the first half of 2010 alone, when the President and certain Members of Congress were working to reinstate the tax. During this same period, only three industries – pharmaceuticals, electric utilities, and oil and gas industries – spent more over the same period.
The brief also points out how the industry’s top dogs at the American Council of Life Insurers (the 10-ton Gorilla in the life-insurance industry) have political clout other industries would “die” to have for themselves. For example, you can read about Kimberly Dorgan, the wife of outgoing Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND), a long-time death tax repeal opponent in the Senate.
Money talks, and in the Foundation’s newest Issue Brief, you can see exactly how and why the life industry is talking one way to family business owners and farmers…and another way to Congress.
Click here to learn more by reading the American Family Business Foundation Issue Brief.
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Have you told the 112th Congress to Repeal the Death Tax?
- ATR & AFBI: End Punitive Tax on Hardworking Hoosiers
Fri, Dec 14, 2012 - Tax Coalition Calls on Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam to Quickly Repeal Inheritance Tax
Fri, Dec 14, 2012 - AFBI: This Bill is a Matter of Survival
Thu, Dec 13, 2012
- A Score of the Death Tax Repeal Permanency Actby Stephen J. Entin, April 2011
- The Cost of Compromise: Impact of the 2011-2012 Estate Tax by Anthony Davies, December 2010
- Life Insurance Cash Cow: An Issue Brief on the Hidden Side of Estate Tax Lobbying by Tim Carney & Dick Patten, November 30, 2010
- Growth Consequences of Estate Tax Reform, by Dr. Douglas Holtz-Eakin and Cameron Smith, American Family Business Foundation, September, 2010
The Death Tax fight will soon be decided in the halls of Congress by your representatives. AFBI is leading the fight for repeal in Washington, but we cannot do it alone.